It's not that everything must be real-time. But, the stuff that doesn't need it has already been well-done for over a decade. The frontier of new possibilities

It's not that everything must be real-time. But, the stuff that doesn't need it has already been well-done for over a decade. The frontier of new possibilities (including as incremental enhancement to the old categories) tends to involve what's enabled by real-time. For example, sprinkling in a little real-time surprise – like a notification that others have already responded to your recent work – can accelerate valuable interactions. For example, in 'blogging' and 'news', both the original authors and active commenters appreciate no-reload indications of fresh comments, mentions, and inlinks. You can do a site without that – but you'll be missing out on features that users increasingly expect, and work to create new interesting content and engagement. In 'e-commerce', a client-pulled site works and is well-understood, but adding live sales help, or indicators of limited deals being exhausted, can help close sales... so why not try it? Even where the major cores of these markets work fine without real-time, the frontier of exploration and optimization uses greater game-like liveliness.